Who

Beat L.A.

If there are two strong memories from my high school years watching the Bird-
era Boston Celtics, the first is the series in 1981 when the C’s came back
from 3-1 down to beat Andrew Toney and the hated 76ers. The other was the very
next year when it was clear that the hated 76ers were going to beat us to go
to the Finals against the hated Lakers. The crowd at the Garden broke into a
spontaneous chant of “Beat L.A.! Beat L.A.!”, because
they all knew that local skirmishes were one thing, but beating the Lakers was
everything.

This year the Celtics have treated their fans to an unlikely turnaround of
enormous proportions, climbing up from a 24 win season a year ago to 66 wins
and a championship. But what makes it especially sweet for me is that they not
only beat the Lakers, they obliterated them.

I was skeptical from the beginning. Paul Pierce had never impressed me. He
seemed too immature to carry a team. I wondered why they traded a high draft
pick for a 32 year old shooting guard with bad ankles. But when the KG trade
happened, it was clear that the Celtics would be good, although no one could
know how good. Even after 66 wins in the regular season there were still
questions. The team had no playoff experience, and they did not impress the
early rounds of the playoffs, needing 14 hard games to get rid of Atlanta and
Cleveland.

The team started to show some life in the Detroit series, particularly the
strong game 6, but they still seemed to play in spurts. A strong quarter or
two here, then a few weak ones. And so it went into the Finals. They almost
gave away a 24 point lead in game 2. They played two incredible quarters of
basketball to erase a 20 point lead and humiliate the Lakers at home in game
4. But in the very same game they spotted the Lakers that lead in the first
place by playing a horrible first half. Then they threw away a great
opportunity to steal game 5, again spotting the Lakers big leads. They just
didn’t seem to be able to put a whole game together to put the Lakers away.
And, they had started to look a bit worn down from the long season and various
nagging injuries to key players.

It all changed in game 6, where they played great for a whole game. It was
fitting for this team in this season to play their best game of the year to
clinch the championship. For once there was offense to complement that
swarming hive-mind defense that made Kobe look so human. The Lakers tried to
hang tough for a while, but by the middle of the second quarter the constant
pressure from the Celtics combined with the euphoric energy from the crowd
seemed to intimidate them to the point where they simply gave up. Pretty soon,
they wilted away and the Celtics got anything they wanted. Some favorite
highlights from the game:

1. KG getting a jump ball on Pau Gasol with one hand.

2. KG hanging in the air, getting mauled by Odom and the throwing it in
anyway off the backboard.

3. Ray Allen hitting three pointers from all over the floor. At times he was
so open that he could have done a dance number after catching the ball and
before shooting it. I feel I must personally apologize to Ray Allen for all
the mean things I said about him earlier in the playoffs. He truly came back
from the dead. Owning Sasha Vujacic
and making him sob on the Laker bench in Game 4 was icing on the cake.

4. Posey standing Kobe up one on one and then stealing the ball.

5. Rondo stealing the ball from everyone.

6. The Boston fans taunting Kobe Bryant when he went to the bench. The Boston
fans performed at a high level throughout the playoffs. You could not say the
same for fans in other cities. In Cleveland, the PA announcer had to prompt
the crowd to chant “DE-FENSE”. In Detroit the PA announcer was perhaps the
most annoying performer that I have experienced since Chris Tucker. And in LA
the fans seemed almost as lost as their team. In Boston, the building sounded
much like the Garden of old, except for the annoying dancers and the fireworks
and light show during the player intros. Whoever made those up should be
killed.

While I’m complaining, I have some raspberries to send towards the hard
working TV people who do their best every night to keep me from enjoying a
good basketball game.

1. Stop with the slow motion HD replays of players talking trash to
themselves after a big play. I lip-read more people saying the long form of
“mo-fo” than I care to count.

2. ESPN should consider hiring a studio team that actually has something
interesting to say. TNT at least has Barkley, who is humorous and seems to
realize that the whole studio pre-game and half-time shows are stupid, but he
has fun anyway.

3. Putting a microphone on the coaches while they wheeze to their players on
the bench or in the locker room is not good television. It’s boring.

4. ABC should fire whoever did their opening Finals show montage. It was a
horrible mish-mash of poor Photoshop work applied to a lot of archival file
footage which would have been more compelling if they just left it alone.

5. Mike Breen is the devil himself. ‘Nuff said. I like Van Gundy though. He
was the only bright spot on the entire team.

6. Finally, 9pm start times and 3 hours of total run time is complete horse
shit. Kids on the East Coast used to be able to watch all of the playoffs.
Even the night games. It is a telling commentary on the soulless commerce of
our modern age that the NBA and the TV networks are willing to basically say
“fuck you” to the practically the entire East Coast so those California
people, who don’t care anyway, can watch the game closer to dinner time.

To sum up, I was wrong about this team. I figured that according to various
conservation laws of Playoff Experience you can’t put a team together in one
year that makes a run for all the marbles and wins. But I was wrong. I was
also wrong about Pierce, who has clearly matured from the somewhat petulant
and out of control guy in 2002 to the clear leader of the team in the Finals
here in 2008. It was a great thing to watch. It was great to see that the NBA
has been resurrected back in Boston. It’s been a long time.